Don't look back
by Never the End127
Summary: "You don't want to know who I really am." Natasha says grimly, and Steve's still blinking innocently at her with those serene aqua eyes, looking so doubtful at the idea of all the evil she's capable of. (A series featuring Steve Rogers and Natasha R. Genres will vary.)
1. Chapter 1

**Notes: Firstly, I know this isn't too Steve/Natasha yet- I just wanted to give Natasha some backround. If you guys like it, I will definitely continue with more romance-y fluff. Until then, enjoy this sketchy, horribly vague account of Natasha's life as a Soviet spy.**

**Rating- T, I suppose, for mentions of human trafficking and violence.**

**Disclaimer- I am as likely to ever own anything Marvel as I am likely to flap my arms and fly to the moon.**

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She's bad.

Natasha knows that she's bad. She's known it since she was very small, since the men dressed in black stole her away from her childhood. Away from Papa and Rifka and Nathan, away from the field with the yellow sage brush and away from the smiling little boy who gave her his _vutrushka _from his lunch pail every Wednesday. They stole away Mama's shawls and all her dolls and they told her that she was theirs now.

And for the longest time, she believed them.

Papa said that God gave her red hair because he wanted to show everyone that Natasha had fire in her blood. He said that she was tougher than her older brothers, tougher than anyone he knew and that someday, she'd be a great leader or battle strategist.

Natasha hates her hair now. It's always giving those men an excuse to touch her. Everyone always wants to run their grimy, soot-darkened fingers through her curls, tug it, use it to tow her around like a dog on a leash. Natasha hates it. She hates them.

She's smart though. Contrary to what Nathan thinks, she's smart, and she can get out of this.

It's five years before Natasha escapes, and by that time her body has been sold so many times over that she doesn't really feel like she owns herself. Like if she runs away, she's stealing from these monsters who have enslaved her for nearly half her life, because she belongs to them and she's been taught not to take what isn't hers.

She's thirteen when new monsters find her. They make her a spy.

Natasha thinks it will be glamorous, like it is in the American spy movies with the flashy weapons and the pretty, skin-tight dresses. And she's right. There is some of that.

There's a hell of a lot of killing, though.

There's another man who works with her; her partner. He's sharp and thin and always angry, with shadows over his face and a growl in his voice. His name is Bodrick. He teaches her to be cruel. He tells her that love is for children.

One night, he tries to climb into her bed and she breaks his wrist in four places.

Natasha knows she's bad, and she feels worse when she imagines what Papa and Rifka would think if they could see her now. But she likes it. She likes the power she has over men now, the way she can make them just crumple like wet tissue paper.

She's been crushed underfoot all of her life. She thinks she deserves to be doing some of the crushing.

And she keeps crushing. Even if she doesn't hate the people, she pretends she does. Pretends that the unfortunate civilian who overheard her conversation with headquarters was the man with the sickly yellow skin who used to keep her locked in a dog cage after she was done 'performing.' Pretends that the woman in the hospital fire who got a glimpse of Natasha's face was the woman who used to hang off the arms of one of Natasha's more frequent costumers. The one who waited and handled the money and drugs and just listened, unperturbed, to the sound of a little girl being savagely molested in the next room.

Natasha pretends that they're all the people that raped her, sold her, broke her down and tried to steal her soul. And she kills them, without mercy. She cannot exact her revenge, but she can control her future now.

It pays good money and she's a killer. She's bad, and she doesn't care.

Everyone she meets in this new world reminds her of someone she met in her old one. Usually, it makes her want to kill them. Until she meets Clint Barton.

Clint Barton reminds her of her favorite brother Nathan, and when he saves her, she's beyond grateful. Of course, she hates him at first. Bloodies his nose and tears at his hair and stabs him in the leg with one of his own arrows. But she's grateful, in the end. And he's pretty good about the scars she's given him- never complains about them again.

SHIELD is a new start, but still she longs for Rifka and Papa and home. A lot of people say SHIELD is evil, but honestly, it's the best project Natasha has ever encountered. They don't kill people without reason. Usually. They don't steal little girls away from their families.

She guesses that's good enough.

For a long time, she wonders if she loves Clint, and she decides she does. She loves Clint, but she doesn't Love Clint with a capitol L.

Stever Rogers is different. He's sweet and he's a gentleman, and he's the first person she's ever met who makes her feel like she's a lady. He always holds the door for her and never interrupts, speaks respectfully and never stares at her cleavage, no matter how provocative her gym clothes may be when the team's running through maneuvers.

If Clint is Nathan, then Maria is Rifka. Fury is like her father, and Steve is like Peter. Steve is like that little boy with the golden curls who shared his dessert with her during lunch because he knew her family couldn't afford sweets. Steve Rogers is the hero, the good guy, golden boy, the freaking _Atticus Finch_ of the modern-day world.

There's a reason she nicknamed him Goldie, and it has nothing to do with his hair. At first she had envied him, then she had wanted him. Wanted some of that light and goodness all to herself, hoped that some of it could be hers again.

She didn't want to be the girl with fire in her blood, and she didn't want to be free or wild or bad. Not now, not anymore.

Natasha wanted to be loved.

When Steve kisses her, she feels like she's finally stolen a part of herself back.

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**For those of you who know the actual history of Black Widow, I apologize for taking poetic license—I just always imagined that something terrible must have happened in her past to make her the way she is—that is to say, badass. And I knew that human-trafficking is sadly a thriving industry in countries like Russia, so I decided she was a victim.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N— Okay, so Stark Tower is now the Avengers headquarters. Why? What do you mean why? It just is, because that would be cool. So. Nat and Cap but heads, as they naturally would. This fic is kind of all over the place, really sorry about that. (Eventually, I'll write a different story with an actual plot.)**

**(PS: I've been having some problems with my computer that are making it very hard to write. I have it plugged in, and I've tried plugging it in with various other charging cables. Yet still, the battery is saying, '6% available, plugged in, not charging.' Since my knowledge of technology is limited to the use of a calculator, I decided to ask random, friendly readers on . Could someone please help me? If you can, I promise to upload three new chapters to this fic within a week!)**

**Okay, sorry, that was random. On with the Romanogers!**

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Natasha thinks Steve's being a bit overdramatic, referring to her as a 'sociopath.' It's insulting, really, and not for the reasons one would think.

She's spent her whole life as a trained killer—most people wouldn't know how to break ingrained subliminal messaging that strong, but she did, and she's pretty proud of it. Not everyone has the kind of mind that can revolt against everything it's been taught. Except for Steve, of course, because even though he's from the freaking _1940s_, he's so astronomically ahead of his time it's ridiculous. He's not even mildly racist, sexist, or bigoted in any way, which is both impressive and slightly rage-inducing at the same time.

_Sociopath._ Really.

So she's a little cynical, a little vicious and malevolent—but that's mainly in the midst of firefights, when her options are limited. And sure, she has some slight… homicidal tendencies. But it's not like she's a maniac.

"I can't believe you actually ran that guy over." Steve had nearly shouted, dragging her feet off of where they were parked on top of the coffee table. He leered over her, looking infuriated at her mildly amused smirk. "That was not in the plan."

"Well, not in the plan you and I discussed." Natasha replied evenly, examining her fingernails.

She decided that Steve was really, really adorable when he got all red and frustrated like that, because even though he's sparred with her a million times, he'll never have the guts to shove her, let alone strike her. No matter how much she deserves it.

He's a gentleman like that.

Natasha draws the memory back, letting it recess to the farthest corners of her mind and trying to shove it away. She had an unsettled, nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she had just had too much sugar or skipped breakfast or (and it was a little sad that she had to add this to the list) had been thrown by a vicious, alien monster into a brick building.

God, her life was messed up.

The elevator doors in front of her finally slide open, and _of course _he's standing there in front of her—he would be. Dressed in his uniform like he just got back from a mission, the corner of his mask ripped to the point that its sagging lamely over his eye—he has a torn lip, too. She almost laughs.

But she doesn't. Because that would be _rude_.

See? She can be considerate. It's just that more often than not, she _chooses _not to be.

Steve gives this annoyed little huff of resignation at having to share an elevator with her, because she can tell he's still irritated and that's almost endearing. But not quite. Natasha slides over to the other side of the elevator, allotting more space for the disgruntled super hero—although he doesn't really need it, because this is Stark, after all, and even his elevators are about as fancy and spacious as a hotel master bathroom.

"You fought good today."

"Well. I fought well." She corrects, feeling a little smug. Natasha understands the English language better than most native-speakers, and she's never passed up an opportunity to remind them that she's an expert who can beat them all at Scrabble.

He glances sideways and she shrugs. "And thanks."

"You're welcome, Nat."

Him referring to her as 'Nat,' is a good sign that they're okay again. Steve's always been like that—when he's mad at someone on the team, he sulks and he's grumpy for like, an hour, and then he forgets all about it.

"So…" Steve reaches back and nervously rubs the back of his head, unfastening his mast and crumpling it casually into his fist. "When I get cleaned up, do you want to see what Tony is up to, or should we just grab some coffee?"

Natasha looks at him and raises her eyebrow, because he must be crazy if she thinks he wants to be around Stark when he's in 'the zone,' or 'Tony time,' as he calls it, in which he's obsessively building and constructing and doing all sorts of weird engineering stuff that no one but Banner really seems to understand or care about.

The rest of the team just refers to it as 'code red,' and 'get the hell out of the way,' time. Needless to say, they all try to make themselves scarce when it's Stark's 'Tony time.'

Steve gets cleaned up and he and Natasha go out and hit up the nearest Panara for everything they're worth. Natasha's never been one of those girl's who's particularly careful about her fat and sugar intake. She's starving; she loads up on two frozen mochas, a bear claw, and a red velvet cupcake, which scandalizes the twig-thin teen behind the counter.

Steve, who naturally eats more thanks to the super serum, gets actual food and they guzzle coffee in the booth they always sit in, chatting and rattling on about nothing in particular.

After he's held her chair out for her and waited for her to start eating before he does and asked her all the formal and polite questions like 'how have you been?' Except with Steve, it doesn't feel like he's just being polite, it's like he genuinely cares.

And that just does things to her tummy and she gets this tight feeling in her chest, so as soon as she's finished, Natasha thanks him for a nice afternoon, swoops down to kiss his cheek and flees before he can say goodbye.

They've been getting more and more comfortable with touching and hugging and stuff like that. Natasha calls Steve 'honey,' regularly, and they embrace and kiss with all the

And they are not dating. She doesn't care what Stark says.

Sure, she and Steve have kind of… made out a couple of times. With Fury and the rest of the team in the other room. After a passionate and heated debate that had ended in a flurry of hands clutching at hair and fingers tugging at the edges of the newly-repaired kevlar, and Natasha dragging them into the nearest empty hallway, and…

So yeah. She can kind of see how Stark's put together that theory.

But honestly, she's explained it to Steve, she's explained it to the team, she's explained it to every gum-popping, godforsaken waitress who gushes over what a cute couple she and Steve make.

Natasha sleepwalks to the corner and waits for the light to blink white.

And honestly, it's not because she thinks she doesn't deserve him or anything cliché like that. (She really doesn't.) It has nothing to do with her self-esteem. It has everything to do with her habit of shutting people out and his habit of forming attachments to people.

She's going to hurt him, she's going to completely screw him over and the sooner he finds that out the better. Because regardless of what Stark says or thinks, Steve is her friend and she loves him and she wants him to have the Good Life. The kind of life she imagines resembles a perfect, normal American family, like on sit-coms—she wants him to have an astonishingly pretty and successful wife, and three little blondes just like him and a dog named Spot.

Natasha wants Steve to have so much more than she does.

She's just steps away from the crosswalk when she hears him behind her—his jacket unzipped and the receipt for their meal sticking out of his pocket, his hair a windblown mess and his eyes confused to the point of concern. "You left this." He says lamely, holding out her battered black purse, and God, she's such an idiot.

She can't believe she got this far without it. SHIELD's finest and most highly regarded specialist. Nearly defeated by the New York City Subway system, all because she was dumb enough to leave her purse in Panara because she's having communication issues. (Although that's not too rare, it's just that usually the people around her are used to it. Steve really isn't.)

"Thank you." She says, a little too sharply and he looks confused again (poor guy,) probably thinking she's mad at him.

She's not. She's mad at herself.

It's a dumb move, a reckless, thoughtless move—the kind Natasha usually tries to avoid. But today she left her purse (along with her phone, notebook, com-cuff and her pager, and a lot of other SHIELD-related items that had very dangerous national secrets) in a very public place, and she figures that if she's going to screw up, she may as well do it right.

And then Natasha is roping the handle of the purse around her wrist, using it to tug him towards her. She twists her fingers into his hair and drags his mouth down to hers in a rough, messy kiss that's a_ long_ ways from being G-rated.

He tastes like coffee and honey and Steve, and the look on his face is just about priceless

His mouth is slightly open and his blue eyes are wide when she pulls away. He looks so stunned and lifeless, if she sneezed on the kid wrong, he'd probably blow away with the wind.

"S-sorry." And she hasn't stuttered since… ever. "I… I'm really sorry, I… see you later." And she needs to get out of here.

The orange light changes (finally,) and she's skidding across the ice-strewn asphalt ahead of the rest of the group, leaving Steve standing there with a smudge of lipstick in the corner of his mouth and his eyes as wide as saucers.

She stumbles onto the sidewalk and doesn't stop until she hits Second Street. The sky is pale gray and there are thin, lacy flakes of snow falling down lazily. They call it 'The City That Never Sleeps,' but in the moment, it feels like everyone's moving through syrup. Like she's the only one whose heart is racing from this, the only one who feels like she's about to burst.

God, she's such an idiot. Such a selfish, senseless idiot.

That doesn't mean that she's not grinning like a schoolgirl on her way down to the subway.

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**Thanks so much, I love you guys! XOXO, (Please help me with my technology crisis, I will write like there's no tomorrow!**


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